Heredity
by SoloWolf
Summary: Post-Opera. An inevitable outcome? Perhaps. But that doesn't mean he has to accept it with good grace. Rated for dark themes here and in later chapters and Luigi's foul mouth.
1. Thanks For The Disease

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with _Repo! The Genetic Opera. _

And please excuse my Italian - I've only been studying for half a year and am not too confident in it. Anyone who has any corrections is welcome to say so.

* * *

Six months.

He should have expected it. Should've guessed when he started coughing up that black shit, same as Pop did. Should've realised when he couldn't concentrate in meetings, no matter how much fucking coffee he drank. Should've worked out waking up in a cold sweat wasn't fucking normal, no matter how stressed he was. Should've done something about it. Should've, would've, could've. But what the fuck does that matter now?

He slams his hand against the picture frame, a bellow of rage and pain half-stifling itself in his throat as his scalpel-slut sister's muffled voice whines a sleepy 'shut the fuck up' through the thin wall that separates their bedrooms. He can't afford to let her know. Can't afford to let anyone know - her, his fuckwitted faggot of a brother, the GENterns, the public... Can't afford to let anyone find out that the smartest toughest bastard Rotti Largo ever spawned just happens to have inherited his fucking disease along with his genes.

_Thanks, Dad. Thanks a fucking shitload._

The old bastard's probably laughing down at him now, he thinks, giving the frame another hard punch. Probably thinks it's all a big fucking joke. Some joke. But then, the geezer's sense of humour never did add up to his.

_Fuck you. Fuck you, Pop. I hate you. I hate you....I miss you-_

_I miss you?_

Yeah. He misses his dad. How sad is that? How fucking sad is that, that Luigi fucking Largo misses his daddy? Even Paviche (Pavi, Pavi, when the fuck had he last called his brother by his full name?) had the good fucking sense not to get so fucking emotional in public and end up sobbing his eyes out like a little bitch.

He swears under his breath, swinging his fist full-force at the wall and connecting with a bone-splintering crunch. Pain flares in his knuckles and hand, white-hot, and he grins, facing it dry-eyed with ease. There. Not such a fucking little bitch now, huh?

The familiar heat is building behind his eyes, and he slams his hand into the wall again and again, hardly hearing his sister's protesting yell and the slam of her door being opened. This is good, this is fucking _good, _because he's angry and he's hurting and he's _alive_ and fuck if he's going quietly, fuck if he's going at all, and-

"Luigi?"

He turns jerkily, hand whipping down to his pocket for his ever-present knife. "-the fuck d'you want, slut?"

She's standing in the doorway, hair loose around her shoulders, a silk dressing-gown barely covering her sleek nakedness - but there's nothing sexual about her pose. "Luigi?" she says again, questioningly, and for a moment he's jolted sickeningly back in time to fuck-knows-how-many years ago, and a little girl standing in his doorway clutching a stuffed unicorn and asking if she could pretty-please sleep in his bed because she was scared of the storm. But that was Carmela Largo. And _this_ is Amber Sweet.

"Get the fuck outta here," he growls, bloodied fingers tightening around the handle of the blade. The adrenaline's dying down, being replaced by a sick feeling in his guts, and the pain is flaring up again. His hands are beginning to shake.

"What's wrong?" There's no mockery in her tone - none that he can hear, anyway. Fuck, she even sounds halfway concerned for him. Well fuck that. He doesn't need pity. Not from her, not from anyone.

"Fuck off, Amber."

"Please, Luigi." She pauses, then takes a step into the room. "Cosa c'è di sbagliato?"

Her Italian is slow and halting, but he stops dead, staring at the woman who is suddenly once again his baby sister. From somewhere in his memory, he dredges up a response (for once free of his usual profanities). "Niente. Vai a letto."

She doesn't believe him, he can see that, and she's already stepping further into the room as he turns around and (accidentally, this time) catches his bruised and bloodied left hand on the corner of the desk.

"_Fuck!" _The pain is intense, sudden, unexpected, and he half-doubles over, crushing his wounded palm with the fingers of the other hand in an illogical attempt to stop the agony. His breath hisses between his teeth and he knows, just fucking knows, that there's a cough following it, and even as he tries to swallow it back it forces its way up and now he's hacking up what feels like half a lung and he can't breathe and his head's spinning and fuck, Amber's still here, she can't see him like this fuck fuck fuck fuck...

And then he's lying on the floor, half-propped up against the bed, with someone's cold soft hand pressed against his forehead and someone's anxious blue eyes fixed on his, and someone asking if he wants her to fetch a SurGEN or something.

And all he can think of is to ask her to stay. Just for a while.

* * *

_"Cosa c'è di sbagliato?"_ - "What's wrong?"

_"Niente. Vai a letto."_ - "Nothing. Go to bed."


	2. Remember Who You Are

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with _Repo! The Genetic Opera. _

Five months

He didn't tell her. Made up some bullshit about being upset about Pop's death, and watched her swallow it (and fuck, she was good at swallowing things, he knew that) and trip off back into the night, when she was sure he wasn't going to just fucking keel over. Didn't help his reputation any, but it was better than the fucking alternative. Better than letting her know he was dying.

Dying. He still can't believe it. Largos don't just _die_. Not from some fucking disease, they don't. Not like this. Not rotting away from the inside, not coughing up their fucking lungs and sweating and gasping for breath and waking up in the middle of the night thinking they're knocking on death's fucking door and wishing the son of a bitch would hurry up and open it.

_Dad did._

But Dad was different. Wasn't he? Cold and calculating and nothing – _nothing_ like his hot-blooded sons. And Dad's dead now. Dearly departed dead Dad. No fucking use dwelling on that.

He paces the length of his room, fists clenching spasmodically at his sides. He knows the dimensions off by heart now, drilling them into his brain in the sleepless nights and the days when facing the world is just too fucking much to bear and staying in his room like a sulky teenager suddenly seems a whole fuckload more preferable.

Five months. Five fucking months. Twenty weeks. A hundred and forty days. Three thousand three hundred and sixty hours. Fuck. It comes to something when you can put a fucking number on how long you have left to live. He fits the paces to the numbers, counting down. _Three thousand three hundred and sixty. Three thousand three hundred and fifty nine. Three thousand three hundred and fifty eight_. All those numbers slipping away like..fuck, he doesn't know. Sand through an hourglass, something fucking poetic like that.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty seven. _

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty six. _

There's an aching tightness building in his throat, familiar and horrible, and he swallows, trying to fight it back. This is ridiculous. This is fucking stupid. This is not happening. He's Luigi fucking Largo, and he can take this. He can fucking well take this, and he can get through it, and he can show those fucking cuntfaced SurGENs where they can stick their fucking prognosis.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty five._

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty four._

The tightness grows and he clenches his fists harder, nails digging into his palms. For fuck's sake! _Pavi's _the snivelling little bitch, the little princess, the one who _cried_. Luigi doesn't cry. Luigi's the tough one. The big brother. The strong one. The one who doesn't sob his fucking eyes out over stupid shit.

Course he is.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty three._

His nails dig almost-bloody semi-circles in his palms, but the rage won't come, doesn't come – the shameful tight ache in his throat and the pricking at the corners of his eyes drive it back, and he knows, he _knows_ that there's nothing he can do to stop this now.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty two._

He paces faster. Squares his shoulders. Digs his nails into his palms. Pretends that nothing's happening.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty one. _

Faster still, muscles tightening, blood dripping from palms, whole body tense. As if he can fucking run from this.

_Three thousand three hundred and fifty._

Something...breaks.

Like a coiled spring snapping free, the tension erupts out of him in a roar that chokes off into painful wrenching gasps that he just barely recognises as sobs. His eyes are clamped shut, trying to trap the tears behind his eyelids, but he can feel them dripping down his face, hot and wet as newly spilt blood.

_Fuck!_

He's crying.

He's fucking _crying_.

How fucking _pathetic_ can you _get_?

He rakes a hand through his gel-slick hair, nails digging into the scalp in a vain effort to divert the emotion somewhere else, somewhere which isn't fucking _embarrassing, _and _unmanly_, and fuck...maybe Pop was right about him being an embarrassment, after all.

_What was it, Dad? 'You disgust me'? Yeah. Think I fucking disgust myself._


	3. Worthy Heirs?

Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with _Repo! The Genetic Opera. _

Amber doesn't comment on the empty place at breakfast. Her eldest brother's disappearances have become a common enough occurrence, over the last few months, and there's really no reason why she should concern herself overmuch with them. After all, doesn't it leave her free to run GeneCo the way she wants, without his interference? And if, possibly, that disappearance were to become permanent, wouldn't that make her life even easier?

No, there's no reason she should worry about big brother Luigi. None at all.

So why does she find herself looking towards the door, and half-hoping he'll walk in?

"Sei bellisima. You look-a beautiful today, sorellina," Pavi remarks, looking up from his contemplation of his own stolen features long enough to give his sister an approving nod. For a moment she wonders whether he means the face he's wearing (her old one, and that adds a whole new level of disturbing to his little hobby) or her own carefully sculpted features (she tries harder to hide the surgeries these days, but her beauty is always a work in progress), but then he catches her eye and makes a grotesque attempt at a winning smile. "Almost as beautiful as-a the Pavi, si?"

Amber resists the urge to throw her plate at her infuriating brother's head, settling instead for a flagrantly insincere smile back. "You're only beautiful 'cos you're wearing my face, you know." She regrets the words the moment they're out of her mouth – they sound so stupidly little-sister-ish that she winces as she says them.

"The Pavi has-a a bella sorellina," her brother agrees, his stolen (no, fairly won this time) lips curving. "Although the Pavi thinks-a that maybe sister should not do so much of the work. Otherwise she will-a end up like Luigi – all-over wrinkles and lines!"

His 'beautiful sorellina''s hand flies up to her forehead, fingers running anxiously over surgery-tautened skin. She knows she _shouldn't_ get wrinkles, not with the amount of procedures she's had done, but the threat of it – the idea of her quest for perfection being ruined at the last minute by some stray frown-line - is enough to make her doubt her SurGENs' skills yet again. She makes a mental note to book herself in for some surgery on her forehead, and is just running through mentally the steps that she will ask them to take when the door opens.

She looks over. So does Pavi, lowering his ever-present mirror enough to raise a finely-plucked eyebrow at the new arrival. "You're-a late, brother."

"Pavi, shut the fuck up!"

Luigi stalks over to the table, crashing into his seat with a barely-suppressed fury that is something more than his normal state, and barking out an order for coffee that sends the hovering servants scurrying off in abject terror.

Despite herself, Amber finds her eyes drawn to his face. Maybe she's looking for the wrinkles and lines that Pavi described, or maybe she wants to reassure herself that this is really her brother, and that the memory of almost two months ago was nothing more than a bad dream. What she finds doesn't reassure her on the second count. Yes, he looks like normal, but there's something under that – something that she can't quite put her finger on, but that she knows is there. Maybe it's in the way that his eyes seem more sunken under his brows, or the slight hollowness in his cheeks. Maybe it's in the way he's looking around the room, as if daring anyone and anything to make the slightest comment about him. Or maybe it's in the way that he's sitting, one hand stuck a little too casually into his pocket, the white linen corner of a handkerchief showing between his fingers.

Whatever it is, there's still enough of Carmela Largo in her to know that there's something wrong. And, apparently, she's still Carmela Largo enough to worry about it.

He catches her looking, and pulls his knife from his pocket, brandishing it threateningly in her direction. "You want to lose another fucking face, sister?"

Pavi laughs, high-pitched and giggling. "Are-a you wanting a face for yourself, fratello? The Pavi could show you-"

"The Pavi can shut the fuck up, unless he wants to be eating his fucking balls for breakfast. Assuming you've still got 'em, faggot." Luigi growls under his breath, looking around the room. "Where the fuck is my coffee?"

A cowering servant hurries forward, proffering a cup of steaming espresso. It smells good enough, as far as Amber's concerned, but the luckless gopher is soon writhing on the floor amid shards of crockery, hands scrabbling desperately in the blood pouring from the deep knife-wound in his guts.

Luigi, apparently a little happier now, yells for another coffee.


End file.
